Fair Dealing

In practice fair dealing answers a narrow set of questions.

A journalist quoting from a report while covering a story. A reviewer quoting passages from a book. A student quoting sources in a dissertation. A researcher copying an article for their own study. A commentator using a short extract to make a point about the work itself.

What it does not cover is the situation most people ask about. Using somebody's photograph on your business page because you credited them. Using a song under a video because it is only thirty seconds. Reproducing an article on your own site in full with a link back. Selling merchandise using somebody's artwork. None of those is fair dealing, and crediting the author is not a substitute for permission.

Where a use falls outside the exceptions, the answer is a licence. That may be a paid licence from the owner or a collecting society, or a work released under terms that permit the use, such as a Creative Commons licence or a stock library licence with the right scope.

The Copyright Act 2022 modernised the Nigerian framework considerably, including provisions addressing online infringement and takedown, which matter to anybody publishing on the internet.

The practical Nigerian misconceptions are consistent and worth stating plainly.

Crediting the creator does not create a licence. Attribution is required for some fair dealing uses, but it does not by itself make an otherwise infringing use lawful.

There is no magic percentage. The idea that a fixed number of seconds of music or words of text is always permitted is not the law. What matters is the purpose and whether the amount taken is proportionate to it.

Publicly available does not mean free to use. A photograph on a website, an image found through a search engine and a video on a social platform are all protected works.

Non commercial does not mean permitted either, though it is relevant to whether a dealing is fair.

For businesses the safe position is simple: license what you use, keep the licence, and check that its scope covers what you actually intend to do with the work, particularly paid advertising.

Three reasons you might lawfully use somebody else's work.

Fair dealing is a statutory exception. It applies only to defined purposes, requires the use to be proportionate, and generally requires acknowledgement. It is narrow and it is a defence rather than an entitlement.

A licence is permission from the owner. It can be paid or free, exclusive or not, and its scope defines what you may do. This is the answer for almost every commercial use, and the scope should be checked against your actual intended use.

Public domain means copyright has expired or was never claimed, so the work may be used freely. Terms of protection are long, and a work being old is not the same as being in the public domain.

The practical rule for a business is that fair dealing is for commentary and study. If you are using a work to sell something, you need a licence.

Fair dealing is decided case by case, so it offers less certainty than a licence. A business relying on it is relying on an argument rather than on permission.

The permitted purposes are limited, and most commercial uses fall outside them entirely.

The amount taken matters, and reproducing the heart of a work can be unfair even where the proportion looks small.

Modifying a work raises separate questions about moral rights and adaptation, which fair dealing does not automatically answer.

And platform rules are stricter than the law. Content can be removed or a channel penalised on a takedown notice regardless of whether a fair dealing argument would eventually succeed.